Beam me up, Scotty

What is it about crackheads and sweatpants, anyway?

I hardly own any sweatpants myself, both because it's not like I'm playing a lot of sports and because I've always been kinda prematurely aged. There isn't anything I do in the course of a typical day that can't be accomplished in a pair of khakis, and I don't have to sweat getting rid of them when the style changes. Worst case scenario, they might split in the seam - and even then I might duct tape them and get another six months or so out of them. But I bring this up because I read the other day that they found celebrity DJ AM face down on a bed wearing sweatpants without a shirt and with a crack pipe next to him, and I thought to myself, Of course they did.

You always hear about crackheads wearing sweatpants. When I used to work at White Castle, there was a crackhead who would come in wearing sweatpants and a Chicago Bears Starter coat from 1986. Man, she reaked. And a while back, I read a great post by Combat Jack about the time when one of the guys he went to law school with tried to borrow money from him to buy some crack. At first he didn't realize anything was wrong, but then he noticed the guy was wearing sweatpants with a pair of dress shoes. Someone with the tools and talent might need to look into this trend. There must be something about crack that makes you not want to wear regular pants. It must make the skin on your legs feel funny.

My bad, if you're a big fan of DJ AM, and you find this is a bit too soon. I was on Twitter the other day, after they found him, and I noticed a lot of people were very adamant about coming to his defense, even though hardly anyone had anything bad to say about him, other than Noz, who could find something bad to say about pretty much anyone other than Pimp C, a shermhead who did time for pulling a gun on a woman in a mall. Ironically enough, Noz's tweet (nullus) had to do with how AM's fans were doing him a disservice by going so overboard with their tributes - this coming from the same guy who did like 20 posts in a row when Pimp C died. I listened to the audio in three or four of those posts, and guess what, I didn't think it was that good!

A lot of the people coming to DJ AM's defense were DJs themselves, and I'm sure part of it was that they were self conscious about the fact that DJs don't do really do anything other than spin other people's records. ?uestlove posted a lengthy appreciation over at okayplayer, in which he attempted to describe how exactly AM was a good DJ. And DJ Premier, who spoke with DJ AM the night before he beamed up for the very last time, devoted a segment of his show on Sirius to AM in which he said something to the effect of, "DJ AM was a good DJ, goddamnit, and anyone who doesn't believe it can kiss my black ass!" (You know how vulgar he can be.) Of course, ?uestlove and DJ Premier actually produced great rap albums (upwards of 15 years ago - zing!); DJ AM was primarily known for dating Nicole Richie.

I'm sure there will be a similar confusion they finally find me face down on a bed, in a pair of Dockers with extra wide pleats, next to a bucket of KFC, and I don't even have one of these blogs where I'm just linking to shit other people wrote and bootlegging people's music. The natural tendency will be to think that I was just some guy who hated on rappers on the Internets for a living, when the truth of the matter is that... um... well, I might need to holler at ?uestlove to find out where exactly my genius lies. He's insightful like that. And I happen to know he's a big fan of my work. His mom once told me so. Then he tried to lie about it afterwards.

He must have been pissed about something I said about the last few Roots albums. But I should probably see about patching things up with him. It's obvious we share a lot of the same interests in pr0n. No homo. And life is too short not to be on the best of terms with the people who might be able to find something good to say about you when you die. You never know what might happen - especially if you have a lot of unhealthy habits.